‘Who commands here?’
There were obviously some differences of opinion about that, but what could he expect from Collegiates? Then that half-Spider creature got pushed forwards, the one with the eyepatch.
‘Tactician?’ she said, trying for casual politeness but obviously as tense as a bowstring.
‘Give me that man,’ Milus ordered her, jabbing his finger at Balkus. ‘He’s needed for questioning. He’s not Collegiate. Give him up.’
‘He is somewhat Collegiate,’ the halfbreed told him, bracing herself. ‘The Princep contingent has asked for our protection. Honorary citizenship.’
‘Officer,’ Milus addressed her. ‘We have just been attacked by traitors from within your ranks. Fly-kinden in the pay of the Empire. The same ship’s crew that your man Maker brought here.’
The halfbreed shrugged. ‘They’re none of ours, Tactician. I can’t vouch for what Master Maker saw in them, him not being here, but they weren’t ever ours.’
He blinked at her. ‘I have reason to believe that that renegade has knowledge relating to what has happened here.’
The woman glanced down for a moment, as though summoning her courage, and then looked him directly in the eye. ‘Where’s Aagen?’
‘Who?’
‘You know who, Tactician.’
‘He was a Wasp agent,’ Milus snarled.
‘He was a Wasp,’ she contradicted him. ‘He was a citizen of Princep Salma. I understand he died on your torture machines.’
‘Spare me your Collegiate scruples.’
‘Tactician Milus,’ the halfbreed said formally, ‘Collegium hereby confirms that it will not relinquish up to you the Ant known as Balkus nor anyone else, because we do not trust what you will do with them.’
At a thought from Milus the soldiers behind him had their snapbows levelled, the front rank dropping to their knees to give the men behind them a clear shot. The Collegiates were armed too, and most of them responded with creditable speed. One Dragonfly woman had an arrow trained steadily at Milus’s left eye, and an expression that suggested she would be only too happy to let loose the string.
The halfbreed – herself the target of a good many bows right then – grimaced. ‘That depends,’ she said, as though he had actually worded some manner of proposal to her. ‘How badly do you want to win the war, Tactician?’
Milus was very aware of the Vekken and Tseni contingents watching curiously, not taking sides but plainly not impressed.
Tactician, repairs are complete, an inopportune report came from one of his artificers who had not been keeping up with developments.
The long seconds dragged by. Milus fought a battle inside his head, and enough of it leaked out that he felt the little currents of dismay and uncertainty creeping through his soldiers.
‘Back on the train,’ he ordered, turning away from the entire fraught confrontation as if it had been nothing. ‘Time to move.’
Returning to the carriage, Straessa found her seat again and managed to get herself settled before her hands started trembling.
‘Oh, stab me,’ she whispered, staring at them. ‘Oh, stab me. Oh, that was too close, Gorenn. That was too close. I am so sorry. I am sorry for every thing I just said and did. I nearly got every one of us killed. I am such a pisspoor officer. I am so sorry.’
For a long time the Dragonfly regarded her solemnly, studying the Antspider’s pale face. Straessa was waiting for condemnation, the ‘this isn’t how we run things over in the Commonweal’, but in the end what came out was, ‘Your people are lucky they have you.’
Straessa managed a strangled laugh. ‘Right, sure they are.’
The Dragonfly’s face twisted unexpectedly into something that was almost anger. Whatever she was seeing, it was invisible to Straessa, save as a tortured reflection in Gorenn’s shining eyes. ‘I was young, back then, when the Empire invaded our lands,’ she began, with a catch in her voice. ‘Too young to fight at the start of it, though I’d killed my share by the war’s end. War forges a people, or breaks them, and you see the quality of their metal when you bring it under the hammer. When my people had to go to war, they broke. I saw people leading armies who had no right to. I saw princes and nobles shatter under the strain, and the sharp pieces of their bad decisions kill hundreds of others. When my people were placed under such pressure, we could not hold our shape. You, though . . . like you say, you’re no soldier. None of your people is a soldier. You come from no warrior kinden. You are people of peace and money and being clever. And yet you have been forged. You have been made strong by the hammer. You, especially. I watch you and I wish there had been a woman like you to stand before the Wasps in the Twelve-year War.’
Straessa stared at her hands, not knowing what to say.
‘I did not know what it would be like, to serve with the Apt,’ Gorenn went on awkwardly. ‘It has not been easy. I have made many adjustments, as you have seen.’
Straessa, who had seen nothing of the sort, wisely said nothing.
‘You, though, I understand,’ the Dragonfly finished, and it was only with the dragging silence after those words that the Antspider realized that that was it, and that it was intended as a compliment.
‘Ah, thank you,’ she managed, and then the automotive was in motion at last, and they were back on the road to Capitas.
Straessa left matters for most of an hour before she let herself wander back down to the Collegiate baggage car: a little more difficult now to squeeze her way down the aisle, but then an army did travel with a remarkable amount of kit.
‘I hope you’re happy,’ she murmured, after making sure that nobody else was within earshot, ‘because frankly that was pissing terrifying. “It’s not such a grand thing,” you said. My arse it wasn’t.’
There was a little shuffling of luggage from down by her knee, opening up the space that the Flies had prepared earlier. There she could see Laszlo, his artificer Despard and the rest of his crew, all sitting elbow to elbow in relative comfort in the baggage fort they had made.
‘Nonsense, you loved it,’ he told her, although his expression was serious. ‘Well done, though, you and the Princep lot.’ Laszlo and the rescued girl had slipped in under cover of the Collegiate detachment in the midst of the Princep Salma soldiers.
‘They’ll come searching here,’ Straessa said. ‘Once they start thinking that maybe you didn’t just leg it, they’ll search all over.’
‘We can move around. This isn’t our only bolthole,’ Laszlo assured her.
Straessa looked past him at the Fly with the shock of red curls. ‘She’s the why, is she? You’re . . . what was it?’
‘Lissart,’ the woman said. ‘Apparently I’m the why.’ To Straessa she seemed too tense and twitchy still, scarcely more at ease beside Laszlo than she had presumably been in Milus’s keeping. Then, again, perhaps being imprisoned and tortured would do that.
‘Why haven’t you all just gone, anyway?’ she asked the Flies. ‘I reckon you could vanish easily in this country, let the Ants search as much as they like.’
‘Oh, we’ve got work to do still,’ Lissart told her, cutting off Laszlo even as he opened his mouth to speak. ‘We’re not done yet.’
Forty-Two
Are these the people I would have chosen to decide the fate of the Empire?
Tynan’s command tent was full, even cluttered. The Lowlander army was close now – projected to arrive some time before dawn, and it was close to midnight now. Any moment his scouts might burst in and announce that Tactician Milus had made better time than predicted, and that the battle would happen now.